Archive for February, 2010
I’ve been writing a lot about fire doors lately, and specifically about what bad condition many existing fire doors are in. The codes have always required fire doors to be kept in good working order, but with the specific requirement for the annual inspection of fire doors it will hopefully bring more of these deficiencies [...]
One year ago today I wrote the first post on this blog, regarding panic hardware on electric rooms. I don’t remember why I chose that topic for my first post, but I tried to post answers to some of the most commonly asked questions before I introduced the site to anyone. Since then I have [...]
This is the 8th post in a series about fire doors and the results of a recent (unscientific) survey. I have kids in elementary school and preschool, and I know about the financial crisis most of our schools are facing. The school system in our town is trying to overcome a $10.3 million budget gap [...]
This is the 7th post in a series about fire doors and the results of a recent (unscientific) survey. The real answer to this question is “it depends.” Stair doors are almost always fire doors, main entrance doors – almost never. Offices, bathrooms – rarely. Storage, corridors – sometimes. You get the picture. As a [...]
This is the 6th post in a series about fire doors and the results of a recent (unscientific) survey. For anyone who is just tuning in or has lost track of this series of posts, I conducted a survey about what the general public knows about fire doors and I learned 2 things – 1) [...]
Back to business after a brief vacation in Costa Rica… This is the 5th post in a series about fire doors and the results of a recent (unscientific) survey. Rule #2 – A fire door must be SELF-LATCHING. This means that when a fire door closes, it latches, typically with either a lockset/latchset or fire [...]
The picture at right has nothing to do with this post, but isn’t it BEAUTIFUL?! I had no idea that I had captured this sloth so well until I was putting a photo book together for my daughter’s preschool class over the weekend. I took the picture in Caño Negro, and the sloth was waaaaaaaaayyyyyyy [...]
This may be in questionable taste, but I thought it was cute. Hopefully anyone who is reading a website about doors and hardware won’t be offended by the mention of “pee.” I’ve included one last (for now) bathroom door closer application just to make this post door-related. I hope you all appreciate how difficult it [...]
When we drove through Santa Elena, we noticed a restaurant with a tree growing up through the middle of it. It looked pretty cool, so we headed there for lunch after our 3-hour morning hike in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve and before our afternoon hike at the Selvatura Hanging Bridges. (On the verge of [...]
The hotel with the treacherous handicap ramp (see previous post) was actually a very nice little hotel, but it had some other code-related issues. I think all of the issues stem from the lack of stringent building codes in Costa Rica, but they’re still a little scary for travelers who happen to be door hardware consultants. Our room [...]
Yesterday we jammed as much rainforest into one day as we possibly could. In the morning we went to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve and had a 3-hour hike with our awesome guide / biologist, Eduardo. He knew everything about the plants, birds, and animals of the reserve, and we learned A LOT. In the [...]
Yesterday we went to Caño Negro, a wildlife refuge near the Nicaraguan border. I saw no doors of note, but I did see a mother sloth with her baby, which was SO COOL!! We saw tons of other animals including iguanas and other lizards, caymans, white-faced and howler monkeys, at least 20 different kinds of [...]
A visit to any volcanic region wouldn’t be complete without a trip to the hot springs. We didn’t want to miss anything, so we visited two different hot springs resorts – The Springs, and Tabacón. The Springs Resort is very beautiful and quite new. We couldn’t figure out why it was empty until we visited [...]
I don’t really like to fly. I know about all of the airline safety statistics, but I just don’t like being confined and especially tens of thousands of feet up in the sky. I don’t like turbulence, even if it IS just bumpy air. I’m not buying it. So when we flew out of Atlanta [...]
If you visit this blog on a regular basis, you’ve probably noticed that there’s been a brief lull in posts. I could blame technical difficulties, illness, writer’s block, or a natural disaster, but the reality is that I’ve been preparing to go on vacation. A real vacation where my cell phone doesn’t work. Hard to [...]
